Customer Reviews

IBM® WebSphere® Application Server for Distributed Platforms and z/OS®: An Administrator's Guide

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"IBM WebSphere Application Server for Distributed Platforms and z/OS" from IBM Press targets WAS admins. The book covers WAS 5.0 and 5.1, highlighting the differences. It covers almost every OS: UNIX, Linux, Windows and Z/OS. A differentiating factor from other books is that the authors focus on Network Deployment throughout, starting with chapter 2.

One thing to note is that there is a lot of duplicated information. Five (out of 26) chapters have separate chapters for distributed and Z/OS. The remaining 16 chapters, sprinkle distributed and Z/OS differences within. In a way, it is two books in one. However, if you are only using one type of OS, the book is thicker and more expensive than necessary.

The authors are quite thorough in discussing most options. They also refer to the InfoCenter, papers and redbooks for more details. There are also many tips and gotchas in each chapter. The step-by-step instructions and screenshots are very helpful.

A running example shows the steps for deploying, configuring and maintaining a sample application. The app is of sufficient complexity to seem real. Tools such as MQ, ASDK and wsadmin are shown in parallel.

The authors intend for each chapter to stand alone. As a result, there is a fair amount of repetition. Aside of one dependency on a future chapter, the book reads well linearly too. This book serves a good reference and I recommend it to those maintaining both distributed and Z/OS systems.

For several years, IBM has built up and refined WebSphere as one of its flagship products. Here is its latest sysadmin manual. The size of which is a good indicator of the capabilities built into it.

Maybe the biggest change from earlier versions is how much of the code base for versions running under (linux, unix, MS Windows) has now been unified with that for z/OS. The immediate and ongoing beneficiary of this is IBM itself; greatly simplifying maintenance and extensions. Opaque to outsiders. But to a WebSphere sysadmin, you also benefit. Because basically most operations are true across these operating systems, it increases your marketability.

The only minor omission I could find in the text is that the chapter on Web Services could need enhancement. Or, rather, that WebSphere itself have greater Web Services ability. The latter field is changing rapidly and perhaps WebSphere deliberately wants to stay a pace behind, in order to see what new features are actually useful, before implementing them. For example, Business Process Execution Language is rising, as a more expressive language than WSDL, to describe Web Services. If BPEL persists, perhaps the next version of WebSphere might support it?

"IBM WebSphere Application Server for Distributed Platforms and z/OS" is a wonderful compendium, very readable, supplies lots of background information and puts good light on the different platform implementations of WebSphere. I love it, good job!!!

If you're an administrator for an IBM WebSphere Application Server (WAS), you're always looking for sources of information. If you're running WAS 5.0 or 5.1, get a copy of IBM WebSphere Application Server for Distributed Platforms and z/OS (IBM Press). It's definitely full of information you'll need for installation, configuration, and administration...

Chapter List:

Part 1 - WebSphere Environment Overview: Introduction; Compare and Contrast: WebSphere on z/OS and the Distributed Platforms; WebSphere Architecture and Design; WebSphere Topology: Distributed and z/OS; WebSphere Installation - Distributed; WebSphere Installation - z/OS; Getting Started with WebSphere - An Overview

Part 2 - WebSphere Configuration: Configuring WebSphere Application Server; The WebSphere Naming Service; The Web Server Plug-in; The Java Message Service; Web Services - An Overview; WebSphere Security on the Distributed Platform; WebSphere Security on the z/OS Platform

Part 3 - Assembling and Deploying Applications in WebSphere: Assembling Applications in WebSphere; Securing Applications in WebSphere; Deploying Applications in WebSphere

Part 4 - WebSphere Management: Workload Management Overview: Distributed; Workload Management Overview: z/OS; Automated WebSphere Administration

Part 5 - WebSphere Performance: Monitoring WebSphere Performance; WebSphere Performance Tuning; WebSphere Performance Tuning - z/OS

Part 6 - Troubleshooting WebSphere: WebSphere Problem Determination Tools - Logging and Tracing; Problem Prevention and Determination Methodology; WebSphere Problem Determination and Troubleshooting for z/OS

Part 7 - Appendices: Trade3 Application; WebSphere Tooling Reference; WebSphere Plug-in Definition; WebSphere Message Component IDs; Custom Strategy Bindings File DTD; Common z/OS Terms; Comparison of Common Tasks on z/OS versus Distributed; z/Linux Considerations; Automated WebSphere Administration Examples

Bibliography; Index

Coming in at nearly 1000 pages, you can see it is a pretty comprehensive guide on getting WAS up and running on both distributed network platforms as well as mainframe z/OS systems. While I don't think that you'd find one shop running WAS on both platforms (although I could be wrong), I still found the comparison between both systems interesting. There is definitely a different mindset between the two, and the comparisons will help you understand the side you don't work with. I was impressed with the level of detail included also. If you were sitting down with the WAS CDs and this book, you'd stand a very good chance of getting the system up and running, as well as having some troubleshooting material to help you out over the hard parts. The only down side of this book is that WAS 6 has already been released, so it could be that the book is living on borrowed time. New shops will probably go straight to 6, while shops already running WAS on 5 may be stable, in which case this book becomes more of a reference manual than an aid to installation.

People running WAS on distributed platforms have a number of books and IBM redbooks to choose from. The options for z/OS platforms seem to be much more limited in terms of documentation and material, so I think this book would be far more valuable to those people than to the distributed networking side. Not to say it's not good for distributed information, but I acknowledge they have more options to choose from.

If WAS is part of your professional existence, this would be a good book to have on your shelf.

A must for any WebSphere Administrator working on large distributed systems! The best book about WebSphere Network Deployment Platform Edition! Highly recommended!